33]"/>children. Be quiet," I begged. Among the neighbours was also the grocery woman.

"He wouldn't take away your children. This gentleman comes to speak with you. Calm yourself, Mrs. S., calm yourself," and softly, in Yiddish, she blasphemed Mrs. Goldberg and her husband, father and child.

After a few moments, during which the grocery woman spoke to her in soothing tones, Mrs. S. quieted down a little. A reaction set in. Thick beads of cold sweat appeared on her brows, while her cheeks flushed with a sickly red. She asked for a glass of water and sat down. To express how I felt all this time is more than I can do. I only know that I went through some faint reflection of all the emotions that agitated the poor woman. I sat down opposite to her and tried to soothe her. She could not look me in the face. As I spoke her eyes caressed the two little children, who, during the excitement, had come out from their hiding place. They went to their mother. She placed them one on each side of her and passed her arms around their necks, presenting to me one of the strongest pictures of motherhood that I had ever seen.

"Well, how do you feel, Mrs. S.?" I broke the silence.

"Just a minute," was her answer, and she ran into the bedroom from where I heard her sobbing. I took advantage of her absence to ask the other neighbours to go out. They departed reluctantly and stood outside. I tried hard to make friends with the children. Not even my pennies would they accept, and soon they went into the bedroom with their mother—all sobbing together. I looked around the house. The stove was cold. The wind blew in from a broken window. A few crumbs of bread were on the table. A few broken chairs, a big clock, out of order, on the mantelpiece, a picture of a man of about thirty years old in the centre of a wall, this constituted most of the furniture. The whole house was in a state of complete disorder, with not even an attempt at cleanliness. Through the open door of the bedroom I saw two folding beds and the torn mattresses shed their straw all around the house. I felt very uneasy and wished to cut short my visit, but hardly knew how to back out of my position.

"Mrs. S.," I called, "won't you please come out and talk matters over with me? I am pressed for time. It's one o'clock and I have other work to do."

The woman re-entered the kitchen, followed by the children. She had arranged her hair, put on shoes and buttoned her torn waist.

"Sit down," I urged. She did so.

"Now," I started, "what's the matter with your children? Why are they walking naked? It is a very cold day and they are liable to fall sick."

"I am a poor widow," she started plaintively, "what can I do?"

"But listen here," I said, "this does not go! The children must be properly clad."

The woman looked me in the eyes for a few seconds, and then, all of a sudden, she asked me: "Are you a Jew?"

"Yes," I said, "but what has that to do with it?"

She evidently heard only my acknowledgment that I was a Jew, and with the feeling that I was her brother she gained confidence that I would not take her children away from her.

"If you are a Jew," she continued, "you will not take my children away, and I will tell you the whole truth."

"Go ahead," I encouraged her, and she told me the following:

"Since my husband died three years ago, the charities have given me two dollars a week and paid my rent. Every year, in the winter, they have sent me coal and clothing for the children. This year they have a new investigator and she does not like me."

"The investigator does not like you?" I repeated. "Why?"

The woman looked away for a few moments, then she shrugged her shoulders and said: "I don't know why. She does not like me and that's all, so they sent me only a half ton of coal at the beginning of the winter and no clothes for the children. Every day I went to the office and asked and begged for coal and clothes, but the investigator does not like me—she does not like me—and she works against me. So what could I do? To go and buy shoes and coal I need money, and I haven't any. From the two dollars a week I get we hardly have enough for bread—dry bread." And as the poor woman pronounced the last word the smallest of the children repeated it in tones that would have melted a heart of stone. His hungry eyes appealed to the mother for the staff of life. "Bread," the older child repeated. "Mamma, give me bread. I am hungry—give me bread."

The mother cried. The children were still asking for bread and the mother was still crying when a young lady, whom I recognised as an investigator from the charities, entered without even knocking at the door. Mrs. S. jumped up from her chair, very confused.

"Who is that man?" the investigator asked without even a greeting as she entered. The woman did not know what to do, what to answer.

"Who are you?" the investigator questioned me insolently.

"By what right do you ask me that?" I replied. "I haven't asked you who you are."

"Well, I have a right to ask," and turning to the woman, she said: "You must tell me immediately who this man is—do you hear? Who is he? or no coal, no money, no rent—do you hear?" She yelled all this, shaking her jewelled finger in the woman's face. I would have liked to have seen how far she would have gone, but the eyes of the poor mother were so appealing, so full of despair, I went up to the investigator and showed her a paper with the heading of the institution.

"So, you are it!"

"Not a word," I said.

"It's all right." She turned to Mrs. S. "I know who he is. It's all right. Any coal left? No, well, you'll get your coal to-morrow."

"And shoes?" begged the woman.

"Bread, mamma," both children said at once, "ask her for bread, mamma."

This was too much for the well-fed investigator. "Oh, these beggars! these beggars!" she repeated. "Are you coming down soon?" she asked me, and without bidding Mrs. S. good-bye she went out, saying, "I'll wait for you downstairs. I'll have to talk matters over with you."

I assured Mrs. S. that I would do all in my power to prevent her children being taken from her, and I was soon downstairs, where I found Miss Alten waiting. We walked some distance together without speaking a word—just eyeing one another. We passed a lunch room. I asked her to have a cup of coffee, feeling sure she would refuse. To my great astonishment she accepted, and soon we were sitting at a table with the steaming coffee before us. The pleasant warmth of the place and the steam from the cups soon melted the ice. She was a handsome dark girl of about twenty, of Jewish-Russian descent. She had a pleasant voice, yet how harsh and cold was her speech awhile ago, exactly the same voice as Cram's. I wondered then! not now! Afterward I learned that this was the professional tone, the intimidating note, as Cram called it.

"Why did you leave Mrs. S., that poor woman, without coal?" I asked. "It's so very cold and you know she has no money to buy any!"

"Oh! she's a pest," Miss Alten replied, making a grimace that passed like an ugly cloud of hatred over her young face. "That was to punish her, to show her that she must not disregard my authority," she continued. "Last month she finished the coal. When I came to see her she told me the story, and I told her she would get it next week. Instead of waiting, what do you think she did? She came up to the office to beg. So! I thought, you come to the office. Wait! you'll wait a month before you get any at all. And that is why it happened. To show her that I am the boss. We have to